892 TWENTY-EIGHTI EVENING.

very yielding, easy temper, generally cool, and often
wears a sweet, placid smile upon her countenance ;
but she is easily ruffled, and when worked up, as she
often 1s, by another sister, whom I shall mention to
you by and by, she becomes a perfect fury. Indeed,
she is so apt to swell with sudden gusts of passion,
that she is suspected at times to be a little lunatic.
Between her and my first mentioned sister, there 1s a
more settled antipathy than between the Theban pair,
and they never meet without making efforts to destroy
one another. With me she is always ready to form
the most intimate union, but it is not always to my
advantage. There goes a story in our family, that
when we were all young, she once attempted to drown
me. She actually kept me under a considerable time,
and though at length I got my head above water, my
constitution is generally thought to have been essen-
tially injured by it ever since. From that time she
has made no such atrocious attempt, but she is con-
tinually making encroachments upon my property,
and even when she appears most gentle, she is very
insidious, and has such an undermining way with her,
that her insinuating arts are as much to be dreaded as
open violence. I might, indeed, remonstrate, but it 1s
a known part of her character, that nothing makes any
lasting impression upon her.

As to my third sister, I have already mentioned the
ill offices she does me with my last-mentioned one,
who is entirely under her influence. She is, besides,
of a very uncertain, variable temper, sometimes hot,
and sometimes cold, nobody knows where to have her
Her lightness is even proverbial, and she has nothing
to give those who live with her more substantial than
the smiles of courtiers. J must add, that she keeps
in her service three or four rough blustering bullies,
with puffed cheeks, who, when they are let loose, think
they have nothing to do but drive the world before
them. She sometimes joins with my first sister, and
their violence occasionally throws me into such a